KUMIHAMA, JAPAN — As master brewers have done for 13 centuries before him, the sake factory boss is everywhere at once in his rustic timbered building along Japan's rugged northern coastline: helping to drag sacks of rice, gently issuing instructions to his four brewing assistants, consulting with his own boss, a fifth-generation owner.
Like those who came before him, he runs his factory floor with the fussy fastidiousness of a French chef, changing from shoes to slippers a hundred times a day as he rushes between production areas and brewing rooms, stripping off his shirt to dash into a 104-degree rice-drying room.
But unlike them, this sake master has curly auburn hair, a degree from Oxford and speaks Japanese as a second language.
They call him "the sake savant," but that doesn't bother Philip Harper, a 42-year-old native of another rugged coastline, thousands of miles away: Cornwall, in southwest England.
For 18 years, this unlikely foreigner has stubbornly endured both hard labor and silent resistance, studying Japanese and the brewing craft until he was eventually accepted -- and celebrated -- by even the most traditional brewers.
In sake-drinking circles across Japan and abroad, Harper is considered a cross-cultural pioneer: the only non-Japanese sake-maker to rise to the rank of toji, or master brewer. This "miracle" of the conservative world of Japanese brewing has people scratching their heads that a foreigner has emerged as the boss of a factory floor.
"Philip loves sake, but he also loves Japanese traditional culture," says Hiroshi Ujita, a Kyoto brewery owner. "His character is almost Japanese. He understands the Japanese way of thinking, our style of daily life. You can taste it in his sake."
Harper has also become something akin to the great white hope for sake: Sales of sake, once the nation's favorite drink, have plummeted here. It's been written off as "an old man's drink" as younger consumers turn to beverages such as beer, whiskey and shochu, a fiery local spirit.
At the same time, sake is being discovered by overseas drinkers -- especially in the U.S., where a handful of factories, some U.S.-owned, have successfully promoted the drink as the newest trend.
Harper has a plan: He's launched a campaign, through writing and touring, to bring sake to a wider audience, especially in Japan.
